


By Any Other Name

by bendingwind



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-29
Updated: 2011-08-29
Packaged: 2017-11-06 00:18:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,772
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/412631
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bendingwind/pseuds/bendingwind
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Wanting to be a good person is something entirely different from becoming one.</p>
            </blockquote>





	By Any Other Name

She just _knew_ that Carrañe would attract his attention, at least once she set in motion the events that started a war between them and the species of the neighboring planet. She stares out the window over the war-torn streets of the city Carra, and she smiles as a woman picks her way across the wreckage, dodging the occasional stray gunshot and speaking desperately into a headset. Juani Roci, who once aided the Doctor on another planet, and the only person in the quadrant with a direct line to his TARDIS.

He lands silently behind her, so she is only alerted to his presence by the quiet click of the doors.

“Hello sweetie,” she says, half singing.

“Next time you want to get my attention,” he bites out, and she turns to face him, “send me a note.” She slinks over and presses herself against his torso. There is no warmth in his eyes as he glares down at her, and for the first time she begins to question herself.

“You know, I’m called River Song now,” she gathers herself and grins. “I even changed it _legally._ All that paperwork, it’s no wonder I like walking on the wrong side of the law.”

“You aren’t River, not yet,” he says, and his sneer steals her breath. She falls away from him and trips over a bit of debris on the floor. The heels of her boots are high and thin, and it’s enough to send her toppling over. From the floor, she stares up at him.

“What—” she begins, but he has already opened the doors to his time machine and stepped inside.

“Got to fix what you’ve done,” she hears him say, before the door clicks shut again.

Words from the past, when he lay dying in front of her, echo in her ears. _Tell her I forgive her._

Rule number one, she thinks bitterly. The Doctor lies.

Melody kicks at an upturned desk, leaving a sharp dent in the aluminum.

***

“Hello, sweetie.” He freezes, and she slinks up behind him.

“I thought we might find you here,” he replies, twirling around to face her with a smirk. “And didn’t I tell you, dear, that only River Song is allowed to call me sweetie.”

“I am River Song,” she says, leaning in to him, “sweetie.”

“Melody Pond. Seventy-seven years old, daughter of Amy and Rory Pond, graduate student in Archaeology at Luna University. Or have you got to that bit yet?”

“I’m defending my thesis next month, on a certain ritualistic sexual worship of the Healing Man of Koreth.” She winks at him. “I’m quite sure you know something about that. Care to sit for an interview?” It’s not precisely the greeting she had been expecting—something along the lines of shock or awe or at least a nice hello snog—but it will have to do.

“Well, nice to see you and all, keep up the good work, got to get going, things to do, planets to save…” He grins at her and begins to walk away, and it is so very _infuriating._ Clearly he doesn’t understand just how long she’s spent looking for him.

“Hold it right there, Doctor.” The gentle whine of her gun charging is enough to stop him in his tracks, and he turns back to face her.

“Ah, with the guns… _again…”_

“I’m not going to shoot you, Doctor,” she says, moving up against him again. “Well, I’m not going to _kill_ you, anyway. You’re here about the Usorian spaceships orbiting the planet, waiting to release their sun screens and transform the entire surface of the planet into a massive freezer in order to harvest its meat. Usorian sausage, mmm.” She laughs, high and sharp.

“Unless you have a spectro-inverter hidden in that lovely jacket of yours, I’d really appreciate it if you let me go,” he says. His eyes are dark, and very close.

“As a matter of fact,” she says, reaching into her jacket, “I do.” She dangles it over her shoulder. She takes note of the way his eyes flash across her, the way his gaze lingers on her cleavage as a smile plays across his mouth, and the way he focuses on the spectro-inverter.

“Ah, R—Melody, always reliable, very nice, I’ll be going then—” He makes a grab for the spectro-inverter, and she dances out of his reach.

“Ah ah,” she laughs, dodging another clumsy attempt to snatch it from her. “What if I need it later? You’ll have to trade me for something.”

“I’m sure I can think of something,” he says, and the way he looks at her… she shivers, and smirks.

“I don’t want some _thing,”_ she says. “Really, I’m not asking for much at all.”

“Oh?” he asks. This is much less disappointing than his greeting. After all, she’s gone to quite a lot of trouble to track him down without starting any wars or killing any people or even breaking _too_ many laws.

A footstep echoes behind her, and she turns just in time to watch a mousy-haired young woman slap some sort of patch on her arm.

“What—” she growls, lunging for the girl, who is almost too slow in scrambling away.

Melody’s muscles do not entirely cooperate, and she finds herself face-down on the floor.

“Turnabout’s fair play, and all,” the Doctor says, sounding disgustingly cheerful. “Juice from the Judas Tree, distilled and processed so that it’s a powerful paralytic, but not lethal. It’ll wear off in a bit. Come on, Alisha, things to do, people to save…”

“You already said that,” the girl named Alisha says, sounding cross. Melody feels the muscles of her throat and jaw tightening, her tongue stiffening, but she fights to speak anyway.

All she can manage is a faint sort of gargling sound.

“What was that?” the Doctor asks, and his smile is cruel but his eyes, somehow, are kind.

“Come _on.”_ Alisha tugs at the sleeve of his coat. The Doctor looks at Melody—simply looks at her, for a moment—as she lies helplessly on the floor. Then he shakes his head, smiles to himself, and turns to follow his companion.

He’s nearly gone by the time she manages to croak, “Please… please, take me with you.” He turns the corner and disappears out of sight.

***

A shot ricochets off the TARDIS as she ducks inside, just inches from her head. The door snaps shut behind her and she stumbles to a stop, panting. The Doctor is sitting on the stairs to the console, watching her as she leans down and places her hands on her knees, gasping for breath.

“Nice save,” she chokes out.

“Obviously,” he drawls, as she regains her breath, “I am going to have to take you with me, Melody Pond, because otherwise you cause far too much trouble.”

“My name is River Song.”

“And also, as it happens, Melody Pond.” She really wants to punch his face in sometimes. “Very fairytale, very cute, that. Not at all as sexy as River Song.”

“Are you calling me _cute?”_ she demands.

“Very.” He smiles, and reaches forward to tweak her nose. She scowls.

“I call you the Doctor even though it isn’t—isn’t your _proper_ name,” she points out. “Tell me, sweetie, why is that?”

“I daresay you’ll find out sooner or later,” he answers. He does not elaborate, but a strange smile creeps across his face. She sits beside him on the stairs, closer than is strictly necessary, and looks at him. He looks back, bemused.

“I’m sorry,” she finally says, looking down at her hands. They twist nervously in her lap. “I—I didn’t know how else to get your attention. I’m sorry I’ve been… been leaving messes all over the universe for you to clean up.”

His smiles widens a little, and she feels hope swell in her chest. He nudges her with his shoulder. “It’s alright,” he says. “Gave me something to do. My favorite game, chasing after my bad girl.”

She finds herself smiling back at him, hesitant and strangely… shy.

“And… and, erm, I’m sorry that… that I’m not her. I know she’s the one you want.”

His smile is gentle now.

“Our timelines are back to front. Ish. Well, sort of. The point is, in general, we don’t meet in the right order most of the time, and there is sort of a… backwardish _trend…_ to it. So actually I haven’t done much cleaning up of the universe yet, at least not because of you, but apparently I will, and… and please, don’t be sorry that you’re not—not _her_ yet. It only makes me feel guilty for having not been me, once upon a time.”

She digests this for a moment, and finally asks, “So… so I’m forgetting you then, sort of? Or it seems like it to you?”

“Just like someday it will seem like I’m forgetting you,” he says, with a nod, “But there are good days, wonderful days, when we meet in more or less the right order. We always have those to look forward to.”

“Someday you’ll love me.” The words are half-mumbled, and she flushes with embarrassment.

“Did. Do. Will always,” he corrects, with a grin and a gleam in his eye.

“Oh,” she replies, and the moment is ruined as the engine squeaks loudly. He bounds to his feet, muttering about gunshots and weakened shields and panicking in general, and she follows him, trying to explain that the TARDIS is fine, he just needs to decompress the dorsal engine deck, in between his rambling exclamations.

It doesn’t escape her notice, though, that no matter what words of comfort he offers, he still calls her Melody.

***

“You have got to stop dying on me, you idiot,” she mutters angrily, scrambling through the pouch on her belt for the antidote. “’ _Melody,_ let’s just _walk_ through this forest of dangerous vipers known for hunting down and targeting humanoids, and of _course_ I don’t need to bring a vial of antidote along, bring yours if it _bothers_ you.’ You’d just better hope I don’t get bitten on the way _out…”_ Her fingers close around the vial and she has it out and she plunges the needle into his leg. He doesn’t move, and she twitches nervously as she waits for him to wake up. His lips are pale and blue, and after a moment to reflect that it’ll take him a while to come around, she reaches out and gently brushes her fingers along them. They’re surprisingly soft and uncomfortably cold.

“You’re so stupid,” she says, quietly, as her fingers trail along the ridge of his nose and smooth over an eyebrow.

“I’m actually quiet intelligent,” he mumbles, and she jumps away and nearly falls over with shock.

“What—oh, I _hate_ you!”

He laughs aloud, and laboriously pulls himself up. He props both elbows on his knees and smiles at her.

“I’m afraid, Melody Pond, that you really, really don’t.”

She throws the empty vaccine syringe at him, and scowls when he catches it.

“We’ll see,” she mumbles, and before he can bring up the subject of her strange behavior, she stands and marches off back in the direction of their time machine.

“I can’t actually walk yet!” he calls from behind her. She wonders if he really does sound a bit desperate or if that’s just her vindictive irritation comforting her.

“I know!” she calls back.

***

“What are you doing?” he screams at her from across the street, the sound of his voice nearly lost in the screeching zaps of guns and booming of explosions and crash of debris. “I told you to get out of here! Get back to the TARDIS!”

“There are _children_ in there!” she shouts back. She doesn’t try to explain further. She picks her way towards the tiny bomb shelter where they are hiding, dodging shots and shrapnel, and after a moment she realizes he’s following her.

“Why didn’t you just say?” he asks, quietly enough that she barely catches his words, when he stops by her side. The shelter is just across the alley.

“You wouldn’t have believed me,” she replies crossly, “I’m just Melody, why would I save children.” She makes a run for it rather than give him time to respond, and she dives through the doors of the shelter just as a bomb explodes to her left. The trickle of hot liquid down her leg tells her she hasn’t quiet escaped the shrapnel, but she’s running high on adrenaline and she’ll worry about it later. She rips off the bottom of her dress and wraps it tightly around the wound, just in time for the Doctor to make his own dive into the shelter. Four blue-skinned Krazi children cower in the corner. Their wide, terrified eyes and hunched shoulders remind her of another little girl, long ago and far away, and gunshots and battles and fear.

“Stop cowering and come over here. We’ve got to figure out how we’re going to get you out of here,” she snaps at them. The smallest, a little white-clad girl, starts to cry.

“Er, Melody, why don’t you keep lookout,” the Doctor interjects. He crouches down in front of the children. “Don’t worry, we’re going to find somewhere safe for you all, but you’re going to have to listen really, really carefully, okay?”

One by one, the children nod.

“Alright then, you grab the little one, we’re all going to pretend to be elephants. They worship them here, you know.”

The children watch him with wide eyes. “Doctor—?” Melody asks.

“I’m not one hundred percent sure how we’re going to convince them that we’re elephants yet,” he explains, almost as if he is confiding a great secret, “But I’m pretty sure we can manage.”

It takes him about fifteen minutes to rig up a rather untrustworthy-looking perception filter, and he leads them out of the shelter in a huddle under its protection. Outside, the firing stops while the holy animal lumbers past the soldiers, and the children climb into the TARDIS. The Doctor takes them to a camp for refugee children two planets over, renowned for its care and safety, while Melody fights waves of dizziness and tries to walk without bleeding on the floor. It isn’t until a nurse pries the white-clad girl from the Doctor’s arms and he waves goodbye that Melody admits, quietly, that she might need to visit the medical bay.

The Doctor catches sight of her leg, and his jaw drops.

“What—honestly, Melody, it’s a miracle you haven’t bled to death already!” He starts to drag her back inside the TARDIS, and the last thing she will remember later is fainting into his arms, and the feeling of quietly being lifted and carried off into the darkness.

***

It’s a rare quiet moment in the TARDIS, and she is thinking. It’s not something she particularly likes to do, because it’s boring, and boredom leads to thinking and thinking… thinking always leads to guilt. She’s got quite enough of that, thank you very much.

The Doctor ambles into the room, studying a piece of paper covered with really very pathetic stick figures.

“Last time I was really _good_ at drawing,” he says, sounding exasperated, “No idea what happened there.”

She sifts through memories of regeneration, her last regeneration, his words, his sad, old eyes and the hope in them when she leaned down to kiss him. She doesn’t know what she expected—kissing and killing a man is not exactly the best start to a relationship, or at least, she’s pretty sure that’s the case—but sometimes she wonders if they will ever kiss again.

“I’m sure you’re better at _other_ things this time,” she says, and though she does her best to make it sound suggestive, it comes out rather flat.

She knows the future, but not truly; she knows that he did/does/will love her or at least she’s pretty sure, but she doesn’t know how or when, and always, always there is the haunting echo of rule number one.

The Doctor lies.

He manipulates and cheats and isn’t at all above changing a person’s entire history just because he doesn’t particularly like it. Sometimes she wonders if that’s what he’s doing to her. Sometimes she thinks she’s grateful if he is.

“Doctor?” she asks, and he looks up.

“Hm?”

“What…” her courage almost fails her, but she manages to ask, “What am I like, when I’m older?”

He blinks at her, as if he doesn’t quite know what to say.

“You are… you’re you,” he finally answers, and of course it’s not an answer at all. River feels unreasonable anger at him welling up once again, and she stands abruptly. She starts to leave the room, and suddenly he’s standing too, right behind her, once of those beautiful hands resting lightly on her shoulder. Her back brushes against his torso and she closes her eyes and resists the urge to lean back into him.

“Sit,” he says.

She cannot resist a quick _“Kinky,”_ but she complies. He remains standing.

“I don’t know how to _teach_ you, Melody, what you need to learn. I don’t know… I don’t know what they did to you, back then, but I don’t know how to teach you love and compassion and I don’t know how I can make you _good._ And you are—you will be good someday, Melody Pond.”

“I wish you would call me River,” she replies, quietly. She feels like River now, not Melody, who took what she wanted and never apologized. River is different; River wants different things, things she doesn’t ask for, things she barely dares to hope will be hers. Things she knows she doesn’t deserve.

“Maybe someday,” he replies carelessly, and she stands and leaves the room before he can see her cry.

***

“You’re leaving,” he says flatly, as she drops her last bag by the door of the TARDIS.

“Yep,” she grins at him, wide and wicked. “Things to do, places to see, people to rob… and I’m afraid you’re getting, well, _boring.”_

He sputters. “I am not _boring!”_

“Oh yes you are, sweetie. All I do is follow you around, and I’ve decided I’d rather run about a bit on my own.”

“We’re in the middle of deep space!” he points out.

“Oh, I’m sure you can get me to a nice market planet in the fifty-first century easily enough. Or the fifty-second. Oooo, how about fifty-one thirty-four? Ajal Worth, Katie Han, all the best stars… and the shopping is to _die_ for, once they’ve got rid of Church regulations.”

“We can stop off and you can shop, and then I hear there’s a really cool lake on Valhalla that I’ve always wanted to see—” He sounds, she thinks with something between sadness and amusement, a little desperate.

“No thanks, Doctor, I think I’ll make my own way from here.” She winks at him. “Of course, I’m always here for a little booty call, if you get _too_ bored on your own.”

“I do not do _booty calls,”_ he sputters.

“You want to drop me off, or are you just going to give me an air corridor and hope I land somewhere with space travel technology?” she says instead

“I’ll come after you if you end up anywhere too terrible, just leave me a note.”

The TARDIS lands with the vworp-vworp sound of the breaks, because he still won’t let her fly. “Here we go, Earth Minor, year five thousand, one hundred and thirty-four, Purchasé Paris shopping district. Have fun!”

“Guess this is goodbye then,” she says, brushing against him as she leaves the TARDIS. “Catch you later, time-boy!”

The door clicks shut behind her, and she turns around just in time to miss it fade away.

She’s in the middle of a forest, and there are strange people in deerskin creeping out from behind the trees, staring at her curiously.

***

_“We have purified you ten times ten, Song River,” Harin says quietly, “But you have not held up your end of the bargain. You have not purged yourself of darkness, of guilt, of anger. What is it that you hold on to?”_

_“Him,” she whispers, her eyes closed._

_“No,” Harin says. For a while, there is silence._

_“I’m not… I don’t care about people, not the way he does. I only care about me. Me and him.” The words break the quiet too harshly._

_“Hm,” Harin says. “For now, you will remain here in meditation.”_

_She closes her eyes and listens as he leaves the hut with the sound of leaves rustling._

_On the third day, she starts remembering things that never happened._

***

“Three years,” she says, almost wistful, as she steps board the TARDIS. “The Gamma Forests are very nice, Doctor, but next time you drop me off there, I’d appreciate it if we could do the bit where it has interstellar communication and _toilets._ The prehistoric tribal era just isn’t the same.”

“Oops,” he says. He doesn’t even try to sound sincere.

“As plans to re-converge two timelines and prevent a paradox implosion go, it was handily done. Dropping me off here in both timelines and giving me time to readjust, very clever. I remember stealing toys and blankets and cars just as well as I remember Mum and Dad and my yellow and green bedroom in London. I remember the day you came and took me to Luna University. I was nineteen, and you explained my nightmares to me. I remember them all, now, more than just snatches of half-sentences and fear.”

He nods, eyeing her cautiously. “Give it a little time, and the memories will start to fade.”

“I’ll always remember what it was like to be her.”

“My bespoke psychopath,” he replies with a smile.

“Just a woman.”

“Both,” he amends.

“Yes,” she says, wistful still. “Half Melody Pond, greatest war criminal in history. She—I—tried so hard to be worthy of you, of the River you loved.”

“She was. She would have been brilliant, wonderful, amazing; far too good for me.”

“You couldn’t let Rory and Amy lose their daughter, and you couldn’t let me suffer, though, could you?”

“No.” He shakes his head.

“Your kindness is a terrible thing indeed,” she says, “Thank you.”

He doesn’t reply.

“Gamma bored me to tears, and I am still going to kill you for that.”

“Been there, done that,” he laughs. “So, River Song, where to next?”

And she smiles.

***

_“Time can be rewritten!”_

_“Not those times. Not one line!”_

Rule number two. River Song lies.

* * *


End file.
